Identification of a cytokine network sustaining neutrophil and Th17 activation in untreated early rheumatoid arthritis

© 2010 Cascão et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Introduction: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease characterized by sustained synovitis. Recently, several studies have proposed neutrophils and Th17 cells as key players in the onset and perpetuation of this disease. The main goal of this work was to determine whether cytokines driving neutrophil and Th17 activation are dysregulated in very early rheumatoid arthritis patients with less than 6 weeks of disease duration and before treatment (VERA). Methods: Cytokines related to neutrophil and Th17 activation were quantified in the serum of VERA and established RA patients and compared with other very early arthritis (VEA) and healthy controls. Synovial fluid (SF) from RA and osteoarthritis (OA) patients was also analyzed. Results: VERA patients had increased serum levels of cytokines promoting Th17 polarization (IL-1b and IL-6), as well as IL-8 and Th17-derived cytokines (IL-17A and IL-22) known to induce neutrophil-mediated inflammation. In established RA this pattern is more evident within the SF. Early treatment with methotrexate or corticosteroids led to clinical improvement but without an impact on the cytokine pattern. Conclusions: VERA patients already display increased levels of cytokines related with Th17 polarization and neutrophil recruitment and activation, a dysregulation also found in SF of established RA. 0 Thus, our data suggest that a cytokine-milieu favoring Th17 and neutrophil activity is an early event in RA pathogenesis.This work was supported by a grant from Sociedade Portuguesa de Reumatologia/Schering-Plough 2005. RAM and RC were funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) SFRH/BD/30247/2006 and SFRH/BD/40513/2007, respectively. MMS-C was funded by Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship PERG-2008-239422 and a EULAR Young Investigator Award

Chronic arthritis leads to disturbances in the bone collagen network

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Power Relations, Conflict, and Cooperation in the Eastern Nile River Basin

The fourth of four volumes, this volume covers resource problems in the Middle East. Contributors include: Amita Baviskar, Ana E. Cascao, Ibrahim Elnur, Robert Mabro, Greg Muttitt, MOhamed Suliman, Richard N. Tutwiler.https://fount.aucegypt.edu/faculty_book_chapters/2048/thumbnail.jp

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The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) will not only be Africa’s largest dam, but it is also essential for future cooperation and development in the Nile River Basin and East African region. This book, after setting out basin-level legal and policy successes and failures of managing and sharing Nile waters, articulates the opportunities and challenges surrounding the GERD through multiple disciplinary lenses. It sets out its possibilities as a basis for a new era of cooperation, its regional and global implications, the benefits of cooperation and coordination in dam filling, and the need for participatory and transparent decision making. By applying law, political science and hydrology to sharing water resources in general and to large-scale dam building, filling and operating in particular, it offers concrete qualitative and quantitative options that are essential to promote cooperation and coordination in utilising and preserving Nile waters. The book incorporates the economic dimension and draws on recent developments including: the signing of a legally binding contract by Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan to carry out an impact assessment study; the possibility that the GERD might be partially operational very soon, the completion of transmission lines from GERD to Addis Ababa; and the announcement of Sudan to commence construction of transmission lines from GERD to its main cities. The implications of these are assessed and lessons learned for transboundary water cooperation and conflict management

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Power plus: Tony Allan’s contributions to understanding transboundary water arrangements

We trace the development of a theory and analytical frames within international political economy that originated from Tony Allan’s mainstreaming of power as a determining factor in the control of transboundary flows. These include the Framework of HydroHegemony, coexisting conflict and cooperation and Transboundary Water Interaction Analysis, counter-hegemony and virtual water rivers. These contributions are exemplified briefly through cases from around the globe and in particular the Nile. To ensure that this aspect of Tony’s legacy lives on, we propose a research agenda that includes the analysis of power interactions at substate levels between central governments and non-state actors

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The study assesses the transboundary economic impacts of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Eastern Nile basin countries using a multi-region multi-sector computable general equilibrium (CGE) modelling framework. The economic effects of the dam in the basin are analysed under three different climatic and hydrological conditions, taking into account both the transient short-term impounding phase and the longer-term operation phase of the dam in a global CGE setting. The results of the analysis demonstrate the significance of the GERD in generating basin-wide economic benefits and improving welfare throughout the Eastern Nile basin. During the impounding stage, the GERD benefits mainly Ethiopia and to some extent Sudan. The GERD impounding inflicts to a certain extent economic costs on Egypt, particularly if this occurs during a sequence of dry years and Sudan decides to increase its level of water withdrawal for irrigation purposes at the same time. When the GERD becomes operational, the negative effects on Egypt’s economy are reversed and the dam is expected to generate substantial economic benefits to all the Eastern Nile countries, although the distribution of these benefits largely favours Ethiopi